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"Lucky Strike Green has gone to war". There was an untold story behind that, which has been told (about ten years ago) in a book called The Father of Spin.

The CEO of whichever company made Luckies contacted Edward S. Bernays in 1932 because he had a problem. He wanted more women to smoke his cigarettes, but they told him they wouldn't buy Luckies because the green clashed with their clothing. Bernays suggested changing the package color, but the exec wouldn't hear of it. So Bernays set about influencing public opinion to make green a "fashionable" color.

He organized an elaborate clandestine PR campaign (Bernays more or less invented PR), to get tastemakers to glom on to the green idea. It worked in the sense that green temporarily became a fashionable color that year, but it didn't move the sales of Luckies by much, and certainly not in a sustainable manner.

If you know that story, it doesn't take much to connect the dots and see that the war was the perfect excuse to get rid of the offending green. Never mind that many folks at the time expressed outrage at a tobacco company's crass claim of "sacrifice," when many were sacrificing much more than a package design.

Most of the cigarette production during WWII went to troops overseas. It's the wrong brand, but many should remember the marketing cry, "Lucky Strike Green Went to War." Today's familiar Lucky Strike pack came into being in stores as Green was shipped off to far-flung battlegrounds. Regarding that steamy Camel sign: My brother and I often sidled by it in the 50s, and would wait for the "smoke" to puff out at traffic. I think we thought it was smoke, not steam. I've often wondered if such friendly advertising contributed to my 20 year habit and my brother's 35 year habit. Alas.

Both my parents smoked Camels. My dad switched to cigars around 1960, he died in 1963. My mom smoked 'em until she died in 1985.

My mom told me that during the war she had to smoke a cheap brand called Marvels because Camels were hard to come by. Apparently cigarettes weren't rationed, but most of the cigarette production was shipped to our troops.

When I was about 12 or 13 years old in 1952, I went with my siblings, stepfather and mother on a trip to New York City and walked directly beneath the sign. I was amazed at how large it was. The tube blowing the "smoke" was probably a good 2 to 3 feet across. That scale doesn't show up well in photos.

Ah yes, the sign, the Hotel Claridge and Times Square during the war years. I remember them so well, along with Toffenetti's Restaurant, any Longchamps or Childs NY outlet, the Woodstock Hotel and, when my family was flush, the Hotel Taft and the Roxy Theater. Camels were hard to come by for civilians during the war. My dad resorted to rolling his own using Model smoking tobacco and one of those hand-operated machines.

Douglas Leigh, the man who designed this and other advertising spectaculars, was 28 when he arrived in New York from Alabama with $9 in his pocket. He developed a multimillion-dollar business designing and erecting breathtaking signs.

Leigh created the Super Suds detergent sign with 3,000 large "floating" soap bubbles per minute. A 120-foot Pepsi-Cola waterfall, the Bromo-Seltzer sign with actual effervescence and the Old Gold cigarettes sign with 4,100 light bulbs were all Leigh creations.

His giant Camel sign that puffed out real smoke rings lasted for 26 years on Broadway and was copied in 22 cities. He was also the brains behind the 25-foot A&P coffee cup that let off real steam.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.